tlemanlike; in person he is rather above the middle height, and of
slight make. From the way in which his clothes hang about him, a certain
sharpness at his shoulders catching the eye of an observer--you would
feel an anxiety about his health, which would be increased by hearing of
the mortality in his family; and your thoughts are perhaps pointed in
the same direction, by a glance at his long, thin, delicate, white
hands. His countenance has a serene manliness about it when in repose,
and great acuteness and vivacity when animated. His hair, not very full,
is black as jet, his forehead ample and marked; and his eyes are the
exponents of perfect sincerity and acuteness.

Mr. Aubrey has been married about six years; 'twas a case of love at
first sight. Chance (so to speak) threw him in the way of Agnes St.
Clair, within a few weeks after she had been bereaved of her only
parent, Colonel St. Clair, a man of old but impoverished family, who
fell in the Peninsular war. Had he lived only a month or two longer, he
would have succeeded to a considerable estate; as it was, he left his
only child comparatively penniless; but Heaven had endowed her with
personal beauty, with a lovely disposition, and superior understanding.
It was not till after a long and anxious wooing, backed by the cordial
entreaties of Mrs. Aubrey, that Miss St. Clair consented to become the
wife of a man, who, to this hour, loves her with all the passionate
ardor with which she had first inspired him. And richly she deserves his
love! She does, indeed, dote upon him; she studies, or rather, perhaps,
anticipates his every wish; in short, had the whole sex been searched
for one calculated to make happy the morbidly fastidious Aubrey, the
choice must surely have fallen on Miss St. Clair; a woman whose temper,
whose tastes, and whose manners were at once in delicate and harmonizing
unison and contrast with his own. She has hitherto brought him but two
children--and those very beautiful children, too--a boy between four and
five years old, and a girl about two years old. If I were to hint my own
impressions, I should say there was a probability---- be that, however,
as it may, 't is an affair we have nothing to do with at present.

Of Catherine Aubrey you had a momentary moonlight glimpse at a former
period of this history;[14] and you have seen her this evening under
other, and perhaps not less interesting circumstances. Now, where have
you beheld a more exquis